by Doug Raber
Without question, it was a remarkable weekend, and I was both physically exhausted and intellectually invigorated when it ended. As Liese had argued beforehand, my ability with the idiom on Monday morning far exceeded what it had been the prior Thursday evening, and I also learned more about direct interpersonal interaction than I ever would have anticipated. All in just three days. The experience was extraordinary, and it was invaluable.
This all took place at the start of the summer. After we returned to Erlangen, I looked for Liese at the usual places for the entire week, but she was a no-show. I asked some our mutual acquaintances, but they seemed unsure why she was no longer part of our unofficial debating group. During my time in Germany, I never saw her again.
• • • • •
My travels were not restricted to Bavaria and its environs, and I made good use of my rail pass. It allowed me to travel first class throughout most of Western Europe at no cost beyond my original purchase.
I journeyed to places where I could engage my curiosity about government and politics in locations that were otherwise hidden from the West. This was during the Cold War, so there were many places from which to choose. My rail pass took me to cities near the frontier, and I made trips into the East Bloc at modest cost.
I went to Budapest, where experiments into a limited free-market economy had been initiated, and I visited Prague as well. Czechoslovakia remained firmly under the Soviet thumb, and everything seemed gray to me — with the exception of the bright red banner praising the Soviet government. The display windows of the shops were empty, and people struggled, yet there was already an undercurrent of political dissent. I think I was able to see this because I knew how to become invisible — I was just a fly on the wall.
In those days, long before the European Union took shape, border crossings were not trivial, even in countries that were our allies. Crossing in or out of Soviet-controlled regions was a different story. On traveling to Prague, for example, our train made an unscheduled stop just before the border crossing. I tried to keep a low profile, but I carefully watched what was happening outside the train. Men in uniforms were waiting. Two different uniforms. Some West German, the others Czech. They boarded the train and proceeded through each car.
“Good Morning. Your passport, please.”
Or just an extended hand. “Passport!”
The train started moving again while this pageant played out. The men exited at another unscheduled stop just inside Czechoslovakia.
The more curious version of the play took place on my return to West Germany. It was basically the same sequence, but this time the men came through and searched each compartment of the train. They took suitcases down from the luggage rack above the seats, and the folded the seats up to see what might have been hidden beneath.
The Czech officials detrained first, and one of the West German Border Police unit stopped to poke his head into my compartment. He had a big smile for me.
“You are glad to be in the West again?”
He nodded a yes to his own question and went on his way. Only later did I resolve my confusion. They had searched so carefully, but they never asked to inspect anything I was carrying. At first, I thought they were just incompetent. But it was the West German officer’s comment that made me see the truth. The Czech border agents weren’t looking for contraband goods. They were looking for people. For Czech citizens attempting to escape.
Without question, the most exciting of my visits to the East was an excursion to Berlin. Until I first arrived in Erlangen, I had not understood the importance that their former capital held for the people of West Germany. Bonn was the titular capital, but they maintained their love for Berlin. I recall seeing a statue of the Berlin Bear, a symbol of the city dating to the thirteenth century, on the main street of Erlangen. It was a small sculpture, and near its base were the words, Deutschland ist unverteilbar. Germany is indivisible.
I remember thinking how foolish that slogan seemed, as the country had already been partitioned for thirty years. Nevertheless, I grew to understand that oneness was an article of faith for the German people, even if reunification remained more than a decade in the future. This was but one small step in my learning process. It was why I was studying political science.
Travel to Berlin was not straightforward at the time. There was a train, but it was necessary to cross more than a hundred-mile stretch of East German territory. Armed guards made it clear to us that the window shades of our compartment were to remain closed. Whatever it was that might be taking place in the East German countryside, they didn’t want us to see it.
Surrounded by East Germany on all sides, the city of Berlin was an island.* The sense of feeling isolated, or even trapped, was intensified by an awareness that the city was itself divided.
I stayed in Berlin for more than a week, bearing invitations to visit two different universities. My primary destination was the Frei Universität Berlin, an institution that was founded in 1948. Like the rest of West Berlin, in which it was located, Western governments had poured extraordinary funding into the city and its institutions,* determined to show the world that at least the Western sector of the city would demonstrate the triumph of the capitalist system. The Frei Universität was a hotbed of the student movement, creating what was, in a surprise to me, a somewhat left-leaning environment. Nevertheless, the lectures were stimulating, and my conversations with other students were fascinating.
The secondary objective of my trip was the Humboldt University in East Berlin. You can imagine my trepidation as I approached the notorious Checkpoint Charlie,* with U.S. soldiers on one side and Soviet troops on the other. I was not accustomed to seeing tanks and other military vehicles on city streets. Nevertheless, my papers were in order. The name of the functionary who signed my invitation letter to Humboldt University meant nothing to me, but it clearly had significance for the Soviet officers at the checkpoint. I saw one of them point to the signature, and immediately their attitude changed from sinister to approving.
I found the lectures I attended at the Humboldt University to be highly informative, as much for what the omitted as for what was said. Even more compelling were my conversations with the students. They pushed me relentlessly to speak in English, something I had resisted with my fellow students in Erlangen.
The Humboldt students said they wanted to practice their language skills as part of their education, but they and I all knew that it would enable us to speak more freely. The apparatchiks would almost certainly be fluent in Russian and in German, but conversations in English would be much less likely to find their way back to the authorities. The other students seemed to be aware of the unusual status that had been conveyed upon me by that signature on my invitation.
In the four days and three nights that I was with them, we talked incessantly. We smoked cigarettes, and we drank beer. A few times there was vodka. The discussions lasted until the small hours of the morning, and by the third day I was afraid I would collapse from exhaustion before my visit ended. I was surprised at how freely the students were willing to speak when we were in a small group, although an inherent caution remained.
One of the East Germans, a young man who was probably three or four years older than I, appeared to have been designated as my unofficial guide. He remained with me for my entire visit, and by the second day we had begun to establish a friendship. Dieter Volkmann was a tall, thin man with dark hair and piercing eyes. He spoke softly, but his voice commanded the attention of others. I suspected he might be some sort of a leader in their student movement, but I never knew for certain.
When I listened to Dieter, I heard a voice of reason. He didn’t preach, and he did not recite the dogma of the party. At the same time, he was clearly a dedicated communist, and there was nothing to suggest that he was a potential convert to capitalism. We were similar in the sense that our goal in those conversations was neither to convert the other side nor to score points in a debate. We were there to learn abo
ut people, cultures, and philosophies that were largely a mystery to each other.
He and his colleagues displayed what I thought at the time was a remarkable approach to conversation. They said things that allowed me to understand what it was they liked about their society and what they would wish to change. The surprise was in how they said it. In a subdued way that was nevertheless quite clear to me, they would state not what they thought ought to be done but only lay out the notion of what they thought was possible. Never advocating. Only describing what might be conceivable. Even if the apparatchiks learned what was said, there was nothing incriminating.
But I gradually understood how Dieter felt, and I had learned from him an important new skill. He taught me the technique of saying one thing while conveying another message entirely.
* * *
19
Wedding
My time in Europe ended in early September. I was only five months older than I had been when I left Hanover, but I had gained years in experience. My understanding of international relations and politics had grown by orders of magnitude, and even the American form of government was something I had learned to appreciate from a new perspective. Some of the budding friendships that were nurtured during those months were to become lifelong affiliations, although I was totally unaware of such a possibility at the time.
My departure followed the same route as my arrival, but in the opposite direction, of course. Once again, I watched river, farmland, and hills flow by as my train sped from Nürnberg to Frankfurt. When I boarded my flight to the U.S., it was as though I had passed through a time portal. I had been overseas for a long enough time that all my conversations, as well as my thoughts and even my dreams, were carried out in the German language. And suddenly, I was surrounded by Americans, and everything was different.
The flight announcements began with “Ladies and Gentlemen …” and continued to “Please fasten your seatbelts,” all without a word of German. The newspapers provided by the flight attendants and the conversations among my fellow passengers were all in English. Even the food that was provided was as American as anything I could remember. My sojourn in Germany had lasted for five months, but it ended in as many minutes.
My plane back to the States landed at Dulles International Airport, a destination chosen so I could spend a few days visiting my mother in Washington. As much as I enjoyed seeing her again, I was sad to have left Germany.
My car remained in Hanover, so I traveled from Washington by train. It was a journey I had awaited with some relish, and I was shocked to discover that my expectations were totally erroneous. The trains that ran along the Eastern Seaboard were nothing like those in West Germany. My train was slow, it was delayed, the ride was jerky, the seats were uncomfortable, and the dining car, rather than providing delicious food and a pleasant ambience, offered sandwiches wrapped in cellophane and coffee that tasted like old dishwater. The culture shock was overwhelming.
Upon reaching Hanover, I found that things were in fairly good order. For my senior year, I would be living in the fraternity house, and I deposited my belongings in my new room. My beloved MGB seemed unscathed, resting comfortably in a parking lot on the edge of campus. As I anticipated, the battery was dead, but I was accompanied by a friend who had jumper cables. Soon, the engine fired into life, and I was happily driving through the scenic beauty of late summer in New Hampshire. Almost as quickly as it had emerged, my malaise faded.
With less than a week before the start of classes, one additional commitment remained on my calendar. On the following Saturday, Dave and Cynthia were to be married, and I would be the best man. I had not given much thought to the event during the preceding months, and now I found myself with conflicting emotions. Certainly, I was happy for them, as they were two of my favorite people. At the same time, I recognized that my relationship with Cynthia, incredible as it might have been, was about to change forever.
I drove to the resort in northern New Hampshire on Friday morning, intentionally driving on back roads through the White Mountains. While not as imposing as the Alps, the mountains were nonetheless an impressive sight as I sped along in my roadster with the wind blowing through my hair. The resort itself was a marvelous place, first class from top to bottom.
There was a rehearsal of the ceremony in the late afternoon, and I had the chance to renew old acquaintances. Dave and Cynthia greeted me warmly, and I was delighted to see that they seemed genuinely happy. That evening, the wedding party was joined by a number of relatives for a small banquet. Uncle Christopher arrived in time to join the party, and he offered a marvelous toast, wishing the soon-to-be newlyweds fair winds and following seas.
• • • • •
Toward the end of the evening, Cynthia caught me alone at the side of the room. She spoke in hushed tones, and it had the effect of keeping others at a discreet distance.
“I need to talk to you Timothy. I need your advice.”
“Of course,” I replied. “Whatever you need. You know that.”
It did strike me as an unusual request, however. Prior to that moment, Cynthia had always been my guide, perhaps even my mentor.
“I’m just getting really nervous about everything. It’s going to be such a huge change for me. And today, Dave told me that he doesn’t want to wait to have children. Even worse, he says that if it’s a boy, we have to call him Richard.”
“Why would that be so bad?”
I didn’t want to argue, but I wasn’t sure what I could say that would help her calm down.
“His nickname, Timothy. Don’t you see? Everyone would call him ‘Dick.’ Would you want your son to have such a vulgar name?”
I began to say that it didn’t have to be so terrible, but she interrupted me.
“What name would you pick if you had a son?”
“John,” I replied, almost without hesitation.
“Really,” she said as a faint smile helped to displace the frown that had been spreading across her face. “Why John?”
It said it was because it’s a name that is simple but rich in history. That it would remind me of John F. Kennedy, who I thought was our best president. And that it goes back two thousand years. First to John the Baptist and soon after the apostle John.
“Oh my God, Timothy! That’s the answer. It’s always been my favorite name. Maybe I can convince Dave that it’s a better choice. He’s always liked John Kennedy, and he wants to be wealthy like John D. Rockefeller. I’m not sure the religious significance would be so attractive to him, but it would be a marvelous choice.”
She leaned toward me and gave me a kiss on the cheek.
“Thank you, Timothy. You’ve solved my problem.”
And with that, she moved away to rejoin the other guests, a lightness in her step showing that she had fully regained her composure.
• • • • •
I had not told Cynthia the complete reason for my preference, as it was hardly the time. It was her day for celebration, not mine for condemnation. Moreover, the explanation would have been far too complex for the brief time available to us that day. However, I will record it here because it allows me to correct a small oversight in my original taxonomy of secrets.
When describing a ‘true secret,” as my name for something that I alone knew, I was emphasizing the enormous gulf between a true secret and other categories such as ‘shared secrets’ and ‘open secrets.” At the time I began developing my taxonomy as a child, I did not appreciate the lifetime of a secret. It was finite. As you would certainly guess, shared secrets frequently become open secrets, and those in turn frequently evolve into common knowledge. And even a true secret could become a shared secret, if I were to reveal the information to someone else.
But sometimes that true secret would never be shared, and it would instead meet a very different fate. If it were important enough, or sufficiently dangerous, or simply so terrible in nature, it would remain secret. Yet it would nevertheless fade and shrink in my mind and
eventually, it would desiccate and shrivel to a point that it would be so deeply buried in my memory that it was beyond recall. In effect, it would no longer exist. Psychologists would likely describe this as a form of dissociation, but I see no need to use such a derogatory expression, a term that some might take as a sign of psychosis rather than simply a rejection of a memory that I found offensive or even just irrelevant.
Such was the case with the account of my inclination toward the name John. I wrote earlier in this journal about my experience as an altar boy, in the time before I withdrew from formal participation in the church. But ‘withdraw’ sounds so unemotional, and my departure from the church was anything but dispassionate. I fled. Because I had to escape from Father Brennan.
Father Brennan’s middle name was John, and I must now entreat you to understand how I could so admire that name when all logic suggests I should despise it. Quite simply, it is because the original secret had diminished and died. The actions of Father Brennen may have stolen a part of my childhood, but I could never allow them to curtail the freedom of my adult life. If I felt a desire to give a child the name of someone I admired, such an act of respect would not be tarnished by a venal secret that had since withered and shrunk into nothingness.
• • • • •
On Saturday morning a couple of hours before the scheduled ceremony, I was relaxing in my room with a copy of Time magazine, trying to catch up on all the news that had not crossed the Atlantic, when one of Cynthia’s bridesmaids began frantically knocking on my door.
“Timothy!” she said, when I opened the door. “You’ve got to go talk to Cynthia. She’s completely freaked out, and she claims she doesn’t want to go through with the ceremony. She says she’s going to call the whole thing off. She won’t talk to us. I don’t know if it’s just nerves, or cold feet, or what. She told me she would only talk to her cousin. To you.”